Minister Rosen Plevneliev and Deputy-Minster Liliana Palvova presented the PHARE and ISPA Pre-accession Programs’ progress at a press conference

Today, at the press conference in the Ministry of Regional Development and Public Works, Minister Rosen Plevneliev and Deputy-Minster Liliana Palvova presented the current condition of the PHARE and ISPA Pre-accession Programs.

In result of the ongoing monitoring for the last three months “Rousse Integrated Water Project”, the delay of the construction and building works has been successfully compensated, Deputy-Minster Liliana Palvova declared. She pointed out that for 3 years 6% of the assignments have been implemented, and for the last 3 months 30% of all the work has been accomplished.

She underlined that the negotiations on the topic of unfreezing the PHARE Program funds are almost brought to an end. The Ministry of Regional Development and Public Works has proposed to the European Commission a financial correction, worth 4,8 million Euros, to be imposed on some problematic PHARE projects.

All the 214 unfinalized Program’s projects in MRDPW are worth 37,4 million Euros. Thus, if the response is positive, there will be nearly 34 million Euros unfrozen from the European Commission. This sum will include 1 million Euros for some PHARE projects that are unproblematic.

10 road projects won’t get funding (6 of them being implemented), having ARI (“Road Infrastructure” Agency) as beneficiary. The inspections have shown that there are inconsistencies in the documents available, as well as some problems with the contracts’ management. The tendency seems to be one of double and even triple increase in the projects’ value. The co-financing of these projects has even exceeded the European financing.
Four of the projects, though, are currently in the process of construction and will be finalized with national money, as the winter season is coming and they cannot be left unfinished. For this purpose, the Council of Ministers approved 40 million BGN last week.

Minister Plevneliev gave the information that this morning the Ministry of Finance has transferred 7 million BGN that are sufficient for handling the winter road situation at this point.

In connection with the statement of Mrs. Kornelia Ninova, a Member of Parliament from “Coalition for Bulgaria”, the Minister said that the companies he took part in, or managed, have never won a public procurement.

He also explained that he handed his conflict of interests declaration within the terms defined by the law.
On the issue of the renovation works of the Ministry, Mr. Plevneliev pointed out that the implementation of this contract is below 30%. Had it been implemented by 100%, then the cost of the renovation works would have been 40 million BGN. Up to this moment the State has given out 13,600 million BGN, and more than 14,700 were approved as acknowledged expenses. The total cost of the project is 41,700 million BGN